Disclaimer
Cinammon: Can I have them?
JK: No.
Cinammon: How about just Draco?
JK: No.
Cinammon: Harry?
JK: No.
Cinammon: Ron?
JK: No.
Cinammon: I'll even take Snape...
JK: No.
Cinammon: Okay, I get it. Sigh I don't suppose you'll give me Mione?
JK: No.
Cinammon: I've tried people. I really have, but she just won't give them to me!
Conclusion? J. K. Rowling owns everything in the Harry Potter universe. The Sonnet quoted was written hundreds of years ago by the great William Shakespeare. I own nothing in this story except the plot. This story was written out of love for the art of storytelling, with no intention of infringement on anyone's copyrights. Please don't sue...
Note on the Pillow
Hermione stretched languidly on the satin sheets. Her eyes were still closed, but her lips turned upwards in a secret smile at the remembrance of last night. She moved a hand to the space next to her, wanting to feel his warm body, only to find the sheets cold. Her eyes snapped open in surprise and she felt unmitigated horror unfurl at the pit of her stomach.
Her eyes fell on the single red rose that graced the pillow next to her. It lay elegantly on a folded note. Her smile returned and she almost laughed at her own foolishness. There was no reason to fear! Draco must have had something to do and left early, and though that was disappointing, it was hardly tragic! He had still remembered her, she thought fondly.
She took the note in one hand and the rose in the other. Before bothering with the note, she brought the rose to her nose and inhaled its sweet, heavy scent. It filled her senses and left her reeling. He wasn't much for loving gestures, but on occasion, he took her by surprise, and that was what made those occasions special.
He loved her!
And she loved him.
She still marvelled at that, even after so much time. A little over a year ago, if anyone had told her that she would ever be head over heels in love with Draco Malfoy, she would have hexed them into next week, but today, she basked in the knowledge.
They had been bitter enemies at first, but the war had changed that.
He had been head boy to her head girl at Hogwarts. That's where their story had really begun. As expected, they hadn't gotten along at first, but having to live with each other in the head dorms, they had both had to make allowances and compromises. The first few steps had been excruciatingly slow and difficult. There was so much history between them and prejudice to be gotten rid of... But once that had been accomplished, it was as if a whole new world became open to them. They still kept up appearances of course, but it wasn't long before they developed some sort of respect for each other.
It wasn't that strange really. They were both warriors in their own way, just on different sides. It was with secret pleasure that they had discovered how evenly matched they were. Their fighting reached a whole new level as they positioned their wit against each other's. They revelled in those arguments, though they would never admit it to themselves, never mind each other. And thus, a bizarre, symbiotic relationship ensued.
His family would have been against it of course, as would her friends, and so, they kept this new, strange friendship of theirs, to themselves; imprisoned within the walls of their dorm room.
She had been the one to find him that night, torn and bleeding, just behind the portrait that hid their common room. It must have taken him all the energy he had to drag himself there, and once he made it, his strength must have abandoned him and he collapsed on the floor.
She took him to his room and cared for his wounds, knowing that he wouldn't have wanted to be taken to the school nurse. She wept when she saw the Dark Mark on his left forearm. She had had hopes for him - for them - though she failed to admit it to even herself, and her heart had sunk at the sight of that ugly, black mark.
Despite that, she had stayed by his side all through the night and the next day. He was lucky it had been the weekend and with a couple of well-placed excuses of having studying to do, she could continue her vigil over him unperturbed.
He had woken up that evening and they had talked; really talked. They had talked the night away. They had talked about life, and about loyalties, and about the war. He said he regretted ever joining the Death Eaters, but that he was never really given a choice; that if he truly felt that there was a way he could escape, he would.
She asked him to go see Dumbledore. He refused.
He asked her why she chose the Light. She told him. They argued about it through the night. She filled her speech with passion and love for her cause, and by the end of it, she had won him over.
There was a way to join them, she had said, without openly opposing his family. He could be a spy. It had been done before, and was still being done, by others; she had revealed carefully. He liked the sound of that. He said it was a very Slytherin thing to do, but he refused to let even Dumbledore in on it, saying that she was the only one he trusted. They compromised. He became her spy, and she, his contact. For the longest time she had reported his findings to Dumbledore always leaving his name out of it all.
It wasn't long 'till they became lovers.
Dumbledore, Harry and even Ron had been let in on the secret eventually. He became their most valuable informant, especially after Professor Snape was found out and killed.
She remembered that night. It was the first time she had seen him cry, as he told her of the death of the man that had been his mentor in more ways than one, for most of his life. She had held him tight and kissed his tears away. It had been a sad time for all of them, but the two of them had gotten through it together.
It wasn't easy to love a spy.
It had been a long time since she had feared that they would turn him against her. She had stopped doubting his love when he had whispered the three most desired words in the English language to her, that memorable morning they watched the sunrise out of his bedroom window, wrapped in each other's arms. He wasn't much for whispering sweet nothings in her ear, this man she loved, preferring actions above words, but he had managed to get his point across on that occasion quite nicely.
No, it was his discovery, his pain, she feared the most. No matter how he tried to console her, the vision of him beaten and broken, remained, to haunt her nightmares. Every time he was summoned, she feared of never seeing him again. And the thing that made those nightmares real, was that she knew precisely what went on at those summons of the Dark Lord. He had never told her much of the pain the Dark Lord subjected his followers to, to test their loyalty, but many were the times when she had nursed his injuries, both physical and mental, in the privacy of their own bed.
She had feared the end of school for it would mean that they could no longer see each other every day. He had assured her that they would find a way, that come hell or high water, she was the one thing he would not give up for anything in the world.
He had proposed on the night of their graduation; their last night together in the little love nest their dormitory had become. He had seemed nervous, but only to her expert's eye. The first time she had seen him so. She had cried and said yes. He had sneered, called her an overly sensitive, overemotional Gryffindor, but she knew that it was only a cover up for the relief and elation he felt and refused to show. He had made love to her 'till morning. After the war they would get married. In the meantime they would take what they could get. He once again promised that he would find ways for them to see each other.
And he had kept his promise.
It was true, they did not see each other as often as they had when they had been in school, never mind as often as they would have liked, but they saw each other every chance they got.
She was still his official contact. They usually met once a week for him to give her his report, but they met at other times too. On many a night she would find him knocking on her door, chilled to the bone from the darkness that was the world without her, seeking her warmth.
Such was last night.
She hadn't expected him. He had shown up on her doorstep cold and wet from the storm outside, his teeth chattering. He had lunged at her, practically attacked her, in her own living room and she had let him in willingly. Who was she to refuse him when her insatiable hunger for him matched his for her step for step?
Last night they had made love in the living room... and the kitchen… and the shower… and finally her bed, she thought, blushing. It was as if he had wanted to mark her entire apartment with their love.
As if he desperately wanted to have his fill of her...one last time...
A vague, all consuming feeling of panic rose within her, and the horror was back in full force. Her eyes widened with terror as terrible suspicions wormed their way into her mind. A leaden weight found its way to her stomach and sank there. How? How could someone go from being deliriously happy, to this? Frantically she tried to unfold the note that he had left her, with trembling fingers.
My dear little bookworm,
I fear that I will not return to you after tonight. I believe Voldemort knows of my betrayal, has certainly suspected it for some time.
Forgive me for not telling you. You would not have let me go otherwise, and I must. I feel it is my fate. I cannot run and I cannot hide and if I stay, he will follow, or worse - and this I fear the most - go after you.
Attachments make a man weak, my father used to say. And perhaps in this he was right, but I never felt stronger than when I had you by my side. My advice to you is to forget me. I never deserved you in the first place.
Do not weep for me my love, for tonight, I go, with you on my mind, and what happier way is there to go than that? My only regret is that I never got to make you my bride.
Draco
Sonnet LXXI
His written words rung in her mind with the sincerity of a doomed man. His last goodbye was short and simple, without a poet's flowery words. It was so typical of him, she thought in a daze, clutching the letter to her. She believed him. To doubt this letter was a dishonour Draco did not deserve.
Slowly, in some subconscious level, the news sunk in her mind and she felt the world shake with their tremendous impact.
An unearthly scream reached her ears. One of many. Wailing filled her tiny apartment and, suddenly, she realised with a certain amount of surprise, that the noise came from her! Tears ran down her face like rain as their time together played in her mind.
He was gone.
Draco was gone.
She sat in bed, amidst the crumpled satin sheets that he had loved, with his scent still on her skin and his letter held tight in her hand.
Why had he not told her last night?
How could she not have guessed?
What was she to ever do without him?
How dare he leave her like this?
Needing to vent off the anger that suddenly, inexplicably, filled her veins, she swept her hand over her bedside table sending her alarm clock, a book and a glass of water that stood there, crashing against the wall.
The noise was oddly satisfying.
She jumped off the bed and did it again with her little desk. Books, quills and parchment scattered over the floor.
Another unearthly scream was torn from her lips. A banshee's cry, heralding death. Draco's death. The thought came unbidden, from the part of her brain that was still too numb with shock to do anything other than observe apathetically this insane creature she had become in her grief. She screamed in rage again and her blood boiled.
She ripped a picture from the wall and threw it across the room. It was a copy of a famous muggle painting her mother had given her. It shattered.
She grabbed the horrid vase her aunt Emily had given her on her birthday, off the window sill.
"Why do you keep it if you hate it so much?" he had smirked.
She threw the vase on the floor with all of her strength. It smashed into smithereens and scattered all over the bedroom.
And that's when she turned her rage on the bookshelf.
She loved reading. Adored books. She had been delighted to learn that he had shared, and even matched, her passion. The only person she had ever met to do so. She loved teaching him about muggle literature.
She tore away Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, not looking to see where it landed. Alexander Duma's The Count of MonteCristo followed it. Book after book, the well-loved tomes were grabbed viciously off the bookshelf and thrown roughly onto the floor. She didn't care about hurting them and part of her was horrified by her abuse of her beloved books. The Old Man and the Sea, she read almost automatically, Far from the Madding Crowds...
Sonnets by Shakespeare.
A sob escaped her throat.
Shakespeare was by far his favourite. And hers. They sometimes quoted Shakespeare to each other on those long nights when the two of them waited for the sun to rise and take him away from her arms, like Romeo and his Juliet. They had used Shakespeare in their coded messages, too. Who would suspect the use of a muggle playwright who had died centuries ago, in transferring coded information about the wizarding war?
She held the leather-bound , black book to her breast and sunk onto the other books that littered her bedroom floor. Shakespeare...
Something clicked in her wounded mind and she searched frantically for his letter once again. She straightened the crumpled sheet with trembling fingers.
Sonnet LXXI, he had written at the end of his message to her.
Her heart raced as she roughly, uncaringly, flipped the pages of the small book, looking for the final message of a doomed man.
No longer mourn for me when I am dead.
Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell,
Give warning to the world that I am fled
From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell:
Nay, if you read this line, remember not
The hand that writ it; for I love you so,
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,
If thinking on me then should make you woe.
O, if (I say) you look upon this verse,
When I perhaps compounded am with clay,
Do not so much as my poor name rehearse;
Lest the wise world should look into your moan,
And mock you with me after I am gone.
And that's when she lost all sense of self and strain on control, and wept. Draco wouldn't be coming back. He would never come back. And she never felt more alone as she did then, crying over Shakespeare's timeless lines, and her love's last words.
It took hours of crying for her to calm down. The sun had already set by then. She only stopped when she had no more tears to shed, but the anger remained. It was a cold calculating fury that consumed her and left her feeling hollow. Her blood no longer boiled in her veins. She felt chilled; ice cold. She didn't think she'd ever feel warm again. Her white knuckles clutched the book of Shakespearean sonnets as if her life depended on it. Her heart had died with him, but, irrationally, she lived still. And that's when she made her solemn vow.
Voldemort would pay.
The Death Eaters would pay.
She would see to that.
Draco had asked her to forget him, but how could she possibly do that? It was beyond her.
She clenched her jaw and brushed away angrily the last tears from her eyes with the back of her hand.
This was their war. They had fought for a cause they both believed it. It was unfair that he would never see the end of it. All Hermione could do was make sure that his sacrifice would not be for nothing. That his killers would not go unpunished.
She raised herself on unsteady feet, already regretting the time she had spent crying for him. Draco would not have been pleased. It was counterproductive and Dumbledore needed to know of his best spy's blown cover as soon as possible. She had already wasted an entire day grieving. She would waste no more.
I'm sorry Draco.
In one hand she still held his letter, in the other, the book of sonnets. From now on, she intended to carry the little black book anywhere she went. Attachments may make a person weak, but she did not intend to ever part with this last reminder of him. The little book would be the only thing she intended to keep of him. There was a war to be fought and she would fight it. For him. For them and their now-futile dreams of a life together. Determination flowed through her.
She would see Voldemort to the grave. She would see the Death Eaters decimated, suffering, in the way they had made so many others suffer. She would have her revenge, her justice. Only then would she join him, wherever he was. And he would be proud of her.
She smiled grimly and apparated to headquarters to give her report to Dumbledore and Harry in cold, bland tones and a neutral expression that revealed nothing. It gave both men shivers the way their once-warm-hearted friend so reminded them of the sarcastic, cynical spy that was her dead lover.
FINIS